Uncovering The Bar Island Trail:

A Study on Visitor Dynamics

Brady Litton, Evan Smith, Andrew Randall, Sean Lukas

Advisors: Courtney Kurlanska, Frederick Bianchi

This project was an Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) conducted by a group of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) students in partial fulfillment of a requirements for a bachelor's degree. This project was conducted with the help of advisors Courtney Kurlanska and Frederick Bianchi, and our sponsor, the National Park Service. We'd like to thank Friends of Acadia (FOA) for their information and help with the project.

We'd like to extend a special thanks to Adam Gibson and Becca Stanley for their guidance and insights.

If you have questions or would like to reach out, please email us gr-BarIsland@wpi.edu

Project Goal

The goal of our project was to understand visitor dynamics on Bar Island to assist in the management of Acadia National Park.

Of Acadia’s forty-seven thousand acres, seventy compose a small island off the coast of Bar Harbor known as Bar Island. The trail consists of two parts, the sand bar and Bar Island itself. The sand bar connects the town of Bar Harbor to the Bar Island trail for approximately three to four hours at low tide. This trail has many offshoots which have been created by frequent usage over the years as Bar Island has been explored.

The only existing study before this IQP of the island was on traffic through the sand bar in 2006 performed by the Friends of Acadia, which was purely observational (2006 Acadia Study). However, this study did not go into depth on visitor impact, activity, or knowledge and is quite old. Since then, there have been changes in visitor behavior, signage, and management that have likely had a substantive impact on their findings.

Assess Knowledge and Expectations

Our first objective, assessing knowledge and expectations, aimed to understand what visitors know about the trail, what they learned from walking the trail, what their expectations were before arriving, what they value, how they found out about the trail, and how they feel about the signage present on the Island. This was achieved through surveys, interviews, and observation.

Evaluate Trail Activity

Our second objective was to evaluate visitor activity on Bar Island and the sand bar. This helped us understand the number of people who go to Bar Island and the sand bar, which trails people take, and how long they stay. This objective also gave us an understanding of where people typically crowd along the island with the aid of GPS tracking.

Track Behaviors on Island and Sand Bar

Our final objective is tracking behaviors on Bar Island and the sand bar, focused on environmentally destructive behaviors on the island. This included monitoring trash, erosion (such as trail offshoots, bluffs, etc.), and rock stacking on Bar Island and the sand bar. This was done through comprehensive pictures along the trails and monitoring of environmentally damaging activities along the trail, such as rock stacking. This catalog of images can provide understanding to future research about changes that have occurred on the island.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse